


Alternate Reality

by whatthefrickfrackpaddywack



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crack at it's highest form, Eventual Johnlock, Feels, Fluff, Happy Ending, I promise, John Watson's Blog, John is magical, John you idiot, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Magic Realism, POV John Watson, Poor John, Reichenbach Feels, Sexuality Crisis, Smut, Virgin Sherlock, oh the feels, poor babys
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2016-04-19
Packaged: 2018-03-19 07:06:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3600813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatthefrickfrackpaddywack/pseuds/whatthefrickfrackpaddywack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The curse of playing God usually means more than a spoiler for the ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Harry

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Alternate Endings](https://archiveofourown.org/works/406157) by [cathedral_carver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cathedral_carver/pseuds/cathedral_carver). 



> What John writes comes to life. That includes big sisters and crazy detectives.

The first time it happened was an accident.  


From an early age, John Watson was entranced with stories. Adventures on the high seas with enchanting mermaids and swash buckling pirates raiding coastal villages filled his mind with wonder. Fairy tails with fire breathing dragons and damsels in distress left him breathless and desperate for more. By the time he was 6 years old, he had read every story book in the house, snatched all of his fathers magazines, his mothers recipe books, and reread all the young adult novels at the public library at least twice.  


The words on the dog eared pages brought him to life. The tiny black letters seemed to dance into existence and form not words, but memories. He was enthralled in the universes concocted on a page, with the world you could create while buried in a book. They awakened him to the beauty found in the smallest things, to knowledge and mystery and love. He was drunk on the imagination wrought from them. His heroes where T.S. Elliot, The Brothers Grimm, Mark Twain and J.R.R. Tolkien. Like any little boy, he wanted to be just like his heroes. So he picked up his pencil and wrote.  


His teachers were amazed with the characters he created and the worlds he turned in for homework. It wasn't long before he was being entered into competitions for boys far above his grade level. He won blue ribbons and plastic trophies, which sat on his dresser top never collecting dust. John Watson never stopped imagining what life would be like if the sky was orange, or if the mail man was a secret government agent like James Bond, or if the Doctor crash landed in his backyard, grabbed his hand, and whispered "run."  


Every universe he created, he wrote down.  


And then the safe little bubble of the little boys world was popped rather abruptly.

\---------------------------------

Cherith Parkaby was Johns idol.  


He was tough as nails and charming as a hot chocolate in January, worshiped by everyone in school. All the girls wanted to date him. All the boys wanted to be him. But what struck John sharpest was the fact that Cherith Parkaby never failed to stick up for his younger brother.  


Tiny Tim was his name. He was a funny bloke, with large wire rimmed glasses and clammy hands. The other kids in John's class called him Tiny Tim because of how much smaller he was than everyone else. John might've gotten the nickname before Tim if it wasn't for the fact that everyone liked him. John was safe and warm, and he wrote amazing stories which he'd read to the front of the class on Friday afternoons before the bell would ring. He was shorter than the rest of the boys, but because he was so well liked and all around adorable, no one thought twice about inviting him to sit at their table for lunch. Tim was awkward. He didn't like football like the other boys and he never wanted to trade anything from his brown paper bag at lunch. He probably would've gotten into a right bit of trouble if it wasn't for his amazing older brother Cherith.  


The first time Tim ever came home crying over stolen lunch money was also the last. The story of how Cherith Parkaby, King of the school, came in the very next day and whipped the butts of the little snots that dared mess with his baby brother became a legend. Cherith took Tim with him to see films at the movie theater with his friends. He'd buy him sweets from the local corner shop and help him with his homework. You'd be daft if you didn't wish you had an older brother like Cherith Parkaby.  


So that week, John decided to write a story about a little boy named John who had an amazing older brother named Harry. He was tough as nails and as charming as Bond and the greatest rugby player ever known to man. He would help John with his homework and rough up any mean older boys who called John short. He would have a no nonsense attitude and wasn't scared to pick a fight and he would love John and ruffle his hair and be everything a big brother ought to be.  


And when he put his pencil down, showed the story to mum and fell asleep in her lap, he wished with all his heart that Harry was real.  


It was raining. Water droplets were soaking his heavy jumper. John opened his eyes to see not his mum and his safe little backyard, but a strange girl with dirt on her cheek and a ratty old shed. John jumped and tried to struggle out of her grip, but couldn't. She was clutching him harder than he thought necessary, and when she wouldn't let him go he started to scream. He was scared. She put a damp palm over his mouth and frantically whispered, "Quiet, Johnny! He'll hear you!" before John's father jumped out from behind that ratty old shed and started screaming at them. Except this didn't look like John's father. This man was dirty and fat and terrifying, and he kept yelling rude words which the strange older girl yelled right back at him. John tried to struggle out of the blond girls grip and run to his father, but the man who had laughed and helped him to tie his trainers not two hours earlier has suddenly boxing his ears and screaming in his face. He wanted his mum. He wanted to go home, back to his lovely little garden and his mum who smelled like fresh bread and his puppy Gladstone. Instead, the girl with the dirty face screamed at the man who wasn't his father. John curled up into a ball and started crying.  


The girl wouldn't go away. She kept telling him that her name was Harry, that she was his older sister and that mummy had died when he was only a few months old, so he couldn't possibly remember her. Not-dad was a drunk. He gambled and yelled and snorted whenever John asked him to read one of the stories of dragons and princesses and knights in shining aormour that he wrote. Harry was always there when not-dad tried to hit John. At school she was a huge flirt with the girls, and trouble seemed to follow her, and she tried to help him with his homework. She was there when John cried in the middle of the night. She always knew when not-dad was going to arrive home drunk, and she'd help John pack his Tardis backpack so that they could quietly sneak away for a few hours to one of her friends houses. The places always smelled like cigarettes and something sour, and he would cry some more until Harry held him and rocked him and he fell asleep.  


Every time he woke up, the nightmare started all over again.  


John got quiet. He stopped smiling and didn't trade anything from his brown paper bag at lunch, because most of the time there wasn't anything in it. It's not hard to put two and two together, even for a little boy like John.  


Harry had come to life. She protected him form not-dad and got drunk on the weekends and would protect little Johnny with her life.  


That's not just when he stopped writing.  


It's when he stopped dreaming.


	2. Sherlock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had given up on this, until a lovely little anonymous told me just how much it meant to them. So here you go. Enjoy!

"Afghanistan or Iraq?"

John could've smacked himself.

He knew that line. He knew that posture, recognized the delicate way the man held his phone between nimble fingers. The cutting gaze waiting for him to respond revealed sharp, intelligent eyes. John sniffed. Damn. Even the cologne described between the pages of his notebook, (Tom Ford private blend, tobacco and vanilla,) was slightly lingering in the air. It didn’t seem to matter that the man standing across from him behind the table was most definitely not what he had imagined, not to mention the fact that this was fucking 2010 instead of Victorian England.

This was Sherlock Holmes.

If anyone else had been listening to John’s inner turmoil, they may have feared for his sanity and checked him into the nearest institute as quickly as humanly possible.

But since mind readers only exist within the pages of books, (how ironic,) John was relatively safe screaming internally without anyone giving him funny looks.

As a bit of an explanation, the world around John Watson was constantly changing due to a number of stories he had written between the ages of 6 and 14. He had stopped questioning the impossible after he imagined himself a big brother, wrote the barest idea of one down, and had awoken to a dead mum, drunk dad, and gay sister who had an annoying habit of slapping his bum when he let his guard down. So learning that a Sociopathic detective he had dreamed up for a school project nearly twenty years ago had somehow come to life and was now sweeping him up in deductions and flat shares, (221B, hope the drug problem didn't bleed through) wasn't the strangest thing to happen to him so far.

No, that award went to the stiletto wearing man in the banana costume he caught stealing all his left socks before he went on leave.

He can't even hear the word Potassium anymore without getting goosebumps.

John was just kicking himself that he had let things get bad enough that he had somehow allowed for Sherlock Holmes to bleed through. He usually kept a tight lid on imagination and creativity, desperate to appear boring and ordinary least his creations wreck some new form of havoc upon his life. Usually when his words came to life, the meaning behind them would twist until they were barely recognizable as the beautiful people he had dreamed up at one time. He wondered what differences this version of the Consulting Detective would bring.

Not for the first time, he wondered what his role in this specific story would be.

But he was tired. And he needed a flatmate. It always was the Watson way to shoot first, ask questions later, and jump in with guns blazing. So he went to Baker Street. Just incase.

And Sherlock was brilliant.

From the very first deductions of the evening to the races through the streets, the blood pumping through his veins, the fire dancing in Sherlock's eyes, and he knew he’d say yes. This incredible, impossible man was the biggest asshole this side of the Thames had ever seen, and John was loving every second of it. He ate more food in ten minutes than he thought he’d eaten all week. He’d seen the world through the eyes of a madman, red strings of fate connecting all the patterns of everyday life with a curtain of suspicion and cockery. He could hear the churning machine of London's underbelly, could smell the hickory smog and the lilac gasoline that flowed through every nook and cranny like an oversized car radio, and Sherlock was the one who showed him. His cane was abandoned, his heart was in his throat, and the wiz of a bullet tide the two together in a way John was beginning to doubt came from the pages of a book. A night of adventure, murder, thrilling chilling excitement, and John was moving in tomorrow to help Sherlock go through the cold cases of a man who swore he had two faces. But for now, they were sitting in a dingy little restaurant that served actual authentic Chinese food, and John was giggling harder than a man in his thirties had any right to be. 

“How the hell did you know Ms. Chang’s sister was the leader of the opposing crime syndicate?” the fascination in John’s voice caused a low rumble of chocolaty velvet laughter to burst from Sherlock's chest, stretched tight over a shirt that was far too small for him. John was already making a list in his head of all the necessary items he’d need to purchase before moving in tomorrow. (Namely food and a fire extinguisher, though he had no bloody idea where he was going to get one.)

“Weren’t you paying attention?” John actually was paying attention. Quite avidly, at that. He couldn’t remember ever writing about any variation of Ms. Chang, and the fact that Sherlock was so very, very different from the man John dreamed up, yet so irrevocably the same, was driving him up the wall with curiosity and fascination. “ I clearly said not 6.42 minutes ago that the son of Mr. Big was the only reason they ever got anything done, and not 3 and a half minutes after that I told you of the way his eyes were raking along the servants figure-”

“Only to snap back to Chou Lin in guilt, I see. They were sleeping together.”

“Oh, don’t be dense, John. They were eloping.”

“Ah. Obvious. I must be blind.”

“You should get your eyes checked.”

“I must’ve been too caught up in the description of their repulsive curtains to hear the bit about Romeo and Juliet.”

“Those curtains would’ve sent my mother into cardiac arrest, John. She would have died.”

“Luckily, I’m here to stop that from happening.” John grinned, feeling a burgeoning warmth in his chest for the first time in what felt like forever.

Sherlock stopped moments before popping a bite into his mouth, chopsticks held in a perfect, posh angle. John had tried, (and failed,) to use his set, but the both of them ended up collapsing in a fit of giggles and John opted for a fork instead. The curly haired man was looking at him with that calculating, picked apart stare that told John his brain was on display for only one man to see. Having that much intensity, that much unequivocal devotion focused on him caused his blood to pump till his heart began to hammer in his throat.

Sherlock cocked one eyebrow and hid his grin in a mouthful of teriyaki rice, not bothering to swallow before announcing loud and clear, “I’ll have to keep you around then, won’t I Mr. Watson?” Except when he attempted to say Watson a huge chunk of chicken flew out of his mouth and landed right in John’s wine glass, spurring on another round of laughter that was quite rudely interrupted by Sherlock forgetting how to swollow and choking on his rice. After the Heimlich maneuver, a generous tip to the not-exactly-but-definitely-still-in-business Ms. Chang, and having to run all the way up to Fleet st. because Sherlock insulted a boy who just happened to have a fucking DOBERMAN with him,they made it back to Baker street.

“You do know your bedsit is in the opposite direction.”

“Really? However did you come up with that outstanding deduction?”

“Oh, sod off.” Sherlock grinned with a sharpness that most would find startling. John would very much like to punch the person who found Sherlock’s smile anything less than beautiful.

“I’ll just call a cab after you make it in alright.”

“Really, John? Walking the young maiden back to her place of residence as to ensure her safe return? How chivalrous. I am grossly disgusted.”

“Well I couldn’t very well just pop off and let you be mauled to death by a small horse. Not after I worked so hard to preserve you for me.”

Sherlock’s eyes, those beautiful, crystal blue eyes, cut through him like a scalpel pressed to the wet tissues of his brain. Those striking almond eyes, framed by thick black lashes, pupils small and calculating. Eyes that danced with frustration and swam with understanding and flickered like a fire that could never burn out. Eyes that could only be described within the pages of a story, the weathered dog eared scripts of tales from long ago, buried in a box under John’s bed. He could get lost in those eyes. He could run away with those eyes. He could fall in love with those eyes.

“If it’s any consolation, you’re eyes are not...repulsive.” Sherlock started, unsure of how to proceed with the openness of pure fascination and unshakable loyalty that was standing before him, confused as to how he’d gotten so lucky to have been handed a loyalty and protectiveness one only found in storybooks, all in the form of a broken soldier.

And John knew he was done for.


End file.
